If you'd asked me last week I would have thought it vanishingly unlikely that Steve McQueen's film Hunger and the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace would turn out to have anything in common at all, apart from the the medium they share. One is a deeply serious account of the damage that humans can do to themselves made by a Turner Prize winning artist; the other is a rather stylish Ford advert with an apparently unlimited budget.

Gemma Arterton graduated from St Trinian's to star as Tess of the d&rsquo;Urbervilles. Now she's playing opposite Daniel Craig in the new Bond film. Is this the start of global domination for the girl from Gravesend?

The main thing to say about Tess of the D’Urbervilles is that it looks lovely, which is the point of any costume drama: fidelity to Thomas Hardy’s bleakworld-view isn’t going to shift overseas broadcast rights and DVDs; it’s frocks and rolling countryside you want. Possibly it’s a bit too lovely. The opening scene of David Nicholls’s adaptation had Tess and the other local maidens dancing around in their best frocks on a picturesque if inconvenient clifftop, wearing more gleaming white fabric than in a Persil advert. This is the problem for costume dramas: they can’t afford to remind the viewer too explicitly just how grubby and laborious life was in the days before indoor hot running water, automatic washing machines and biological powder, and there’s not muchpoint in complaining about it.